New Delhi (India), May 17: Annual Report serves as a crucial tool for investor communication, providing a comprehensive summary of a company's performance over the previous year. It offers a wealth of relevant information to the investor community, allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of the company's overall financial health. The Annual Report serves as a means of creating an emotional connection between an organization and its target stakeholders. While the report itself may be incidental, the message it conveys and the audience it reaches are crucial factors in determining its effectiveness.
Manjari Enterprises, a full-fledged annual report printing agency based out of Kolkata, popularly known as the City of Joy, has been serving the likes of diverse listed companies across various stock exchanges since 2005. The business was founded in 1981 by Pawan Kumar Mundhra (principal promoter), and was later joined by his son Umang Mundhra in 2005. It has always been a growing agency, a budding start-up, and a friendly printer. Maintaining long-standing relationships through a low-cost service model has always been a trait of this Company.
FY 2006-07 was a new history in the journey of this print agency, when one of its prominent clients, with whom it had been in association for more than two and a half decades, lost the annual report theme section artwork to the client's PR agency, which led it to introspect on its limitations. Then came into the picture with the support of the lead production manager of this agency - two employees of one of the leading annual report design agencies of that time, which gave the promoters of Manjari Enterprises much-needed support to accept jobs from existing and prospective clients. Also came to the rescue was one of the relatives of the promoter’s family, who was also an ex-employee of the abovementioned agency for a brief period during her MBA internship job. She guided the second-generation promoter (Umang Mundhra) to order annual reports of listed companies from the NYSE and NASDAQ (as they eventually also send free hard copies to anybody on demand) and learn the "trend" of design and content writing. Since then, it has been a never-ending story for this budding print agency in their zeal to become a full-fledged annual report design agency as well.
FY 2007-08 summer was a "Shaping the future" story for Manjari Enterprises when the management team of a Kolkata-based business group (with an interest in paper and chemical business) asked them to design the annual report for their chemicals company. Also, the zeal of the promoters of this print to learn more about the art of content writing for annual reports led them to invest in single-single shares of many listed companies, collect colourful report hard copies from their neighbours and relatives and also from their prominent stock-broking clients, buy annual report hard copies from local "raddiwalas", and most happily even collect from many letter boxes of their residential and office building. Since then, they have served many prominent clients from diverse and traditional industries like Tea, Jute, Textile, Transport, Iron & Steel, Infrastructure & Real Estate, Energy & Power, Engineering, Paper, Recycling, Financial Services, Plywood and Petrochemicals.
2011-12 was a sunshine moment in the history of this budding design and print agency when the Annual Report of Rupa & Company Ltd. was adjudged with the Platinum Award and Joonktollee Tea & Industries Ltd. was adjudged with the Gold Award at LACP, USA. History was again created at LACP in 2012-13 when Joonktollee Tea & Industries Ltd. has adjudged the Gold Award. During the 2013-14 Annual Report Gloster Limited and Lux Industries Ltd. were adjudged with Gold and Silver Awards, respectively. This agency has always put a balanced focus on both print and design and with the constant support of its 60+ clients (the majority of whom have been associated with it for more than a decade), it has been highly successful in designing and printing lakhs of annual reports and other shareholder communication jobs on a year-on-year basis.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which stuck around the world and affected businesses in India as well during the spring of 2019-20 dealt a blow to this budding agency as well. The first-generation promoter informed us about various restrictions put in place by regulatory authorities on annual report printing. We lost almost 50% of our turnover. However, thanks to the unwavering support of our clients and our efficient, cost-effective service model, we persevered and kept our focus on every aspect of our businesses. We worked diligently with existing clients and concentrated on generating maximum revenue through various services such as book printing (educational and fictional), annual report designing and printing, regardless of volume. We were able to overcome these challenging times due to the relentless effort and commitment we put in, and have emerged resilient on the other side. We not only salvaged our traditional business but also instilled the "Fighters-fight" attitude in our team. By deploying additional domain knowledge and partnering with new clients, we further expanded the scope of our services, including mainstream annual report design. Today, we have achieved almost 80-85% of our pre-covid level turnover and have blossomed as a full-service annual report design agency well backed by our in-house printing section, a trait that only a few companies in India possess.
At present, our design and content team is aptly balanced, and we are steadily expanding our workforce in line with our growth trajectory. As a leading agency in India, we specialize in helping businesses articulate their corporate identity through our services. Our expertise enables us to furnish our clients with "REALISTIC AND NON-REPETITIVE CONTENT" that is tailored to their specific business needs. Instead of inundating our clients with bloated reports and superfluous content, we prioritize producing concise and "READER-FRIENDLY REPORTS" that are both effective and efficient. Our clientele primarily comprises small and medium enterprises, and we take pride in providing them with cost-effective solutions to reach out to their diverse stakeholders. Due to the emphasis on this aspect, Rupa & Company Ltd's latest annual report has been recognized as Best Corporate/Brand Identity and has been awarded the "BrandEdge Award" for Best Practices in their FY 2021-22 Annual Report. Our deliverables have been enhanced with the inclusion of top-tier management practices. As a result, we have attained ISO 9001-2015 certification from QRO, further solidifying our commitment to excellence.
Today, while moving ahead, as we realise and see a paradigm shift in how companies are speaking to various stakeholders and communities with a sense of awareness and policies laid down by the government, I am quite surprised that we are getting steady enquiries from many listed and unlisted companies as well. As a result, I think there is a lot of opportunity for businesses to utilise the communication services of specialised agencies like ours, and we are working to broaden the reach of our market. There are almost 5,000+ listed companies on various bourses, and eventually, only 15% of them get their reports designed with effective communication strategies. With such an amplifying opportunity in place and a growing awareness and education about effective investor communication taking place, I am quite confident that my team can produce high-quality and highly benchmarked reports in the future.
For more information visit: www.manjari.net
Contact: print@manjari.net